The Iceberg Method
Greetings and salutations Scribblers!
Today we’re diving into more ways you can really deepen your characters and help get readers more engaged in your story. Personally, I love a character with baggage and backstory. Getting that inside look at why they are the way they are is just fantastic. And since it’s backstory, it’s the highlight reel of how they came to be so we only get the big moments and the big emotions, which is something that really speaks to us as human beings. We like seeing the big moments. As authors, we get to arrange and curate those moments into what we think is going to do the best job of hooking our readers.
A well developed character is like an iceberg. The reader is only going to clearly see the top bit that’s sticking out into the story, but beneath that is an absolute mountain of how they grew to be the way they are. Our characters' actions are driven by desires that aren’t explicitly on the page. We should be hinting at them, but generally speaking, our characters aren’t ready to face that truth about themselves, so they don’t even realize why they’re doing what they’re doing. But as the author, we need to know.
This is what allows us to guide the character through their character are, and monitor their decisions, reactions, and rationale. These glimpses into and hints about their lives before we meet them on page one is what allows us to understand their bad decisions as we’re screaming at them to not do the thing that’s going to absolutely ruin their lives. Of course that character in the romance isn’t going to admit they really want the love interest to walk them home or help them out–it would mean admitting they like that person and in the past that only led to hurt and betrayal. So, we the audience, know they should totally accept that offer of help, but we can also understand why they don’t. This is called dramatic irony–when the audience knows or understands something the character doesn’t and it’s a first class way of engaging a reader.
So, how do we dig into and figure out the core moments and memories that created our character–and, quick note, this is something you’re going to want to do for all your big players, including your antagonist. Villains are so much more interesting when we start to understand the complex things that led them to do whatever bad thing they’re doing. A humorous look at this is [name of jafar play] that dives into why Aladdin is the actual villain of the story and Jafar is maybe the good guy. When you start to consider his take on the story, it changes everything. I know I harp on this a lot, but this is the type of character work that will make readers become emotionally engaged with your character.
The best thing you can do is to read Story Genius. It’s a bit of a difficult read, but the methodology is solid. Basically you look at your character’s younger years and you choose three ways in which a mentality or misbelief about the world was created. So the character who is hyper aware of their surroundings and how others are reacting to a situation may have had a not great childhood.
Another book I love to use to dive into my characters psyche is The Writers Guide to Character Traits by Linda Edelstein. What’s great about this one is that it gets into how a person’s stage of development and age affects how they react or understand a situation and how that can grow into unresolved baggage.
A quick way to put this into practice is to take a moment from your story and start to pick apart what’s going through your character’s mind and what past experiences have led to their understanding of this moment. Let’s pretend our character just graduated college and got their first office job. Two weeks in, their boss does a check in, reviewing what they’ve been doing well and what they could put more attention to. This is their first ever performance review and their immediate conclusion is that the boss hates them and is about to fire them.
Now, it’s possible the boss is trying to fire them, but what’s more likely is this character was a 4.0 in high school and college and although people have tried to give constructive feedback, they’ve basically ignored it because they don’t need people to tell them what to do.
Their past experiences have shaped how they’re engaging with this specific moment. From there, dig deeper. Go back to when this person was twelve. Was there something that happened to them during a sporting event? Maybe a coach spoke with them about being more of a team player and looking for someone they can pass to rather than just dominating the court on their own. But instead of taking that advice, they continued to keep control and scored almost all the points during that game. This has reinforced the idea that they don’t need coaching, that they’re already perfect and able to win. And did I mention that this was the basketball game that got their team into the state championship?
That means this is probably a core memory. It was a moment charged with emotion and afterwards, everyone was praising them and celebrating their success. It’s absolutely going to influence how they move through the world as an adult.
Find two or three core memories for your character that really explains why they view the world the way they do.Then you need to layer this into the narrative as your character encounters situations and works to solve problems.
You might not explicitly bring these moments onto the page of the story, but they’re things you need to know about your character in order to really bring them to life. What readers see on the page is only the tip of the iceberg–there is always a lot going on under the water and as the author, it’s your job to understand how all of that creates the characters we present to our readers.
As always, your mileage may vary! Okay, tell me your favorite character backstory moment!
Consisting of five sections, this course will include strategies for revising characters, plot, pacing, and worlding building. It also includes resources for copyediting and for gaining insight into your manuscripts theme and purpose
